Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Pelican guitarist Trevor de Brauw and Crucial Conflict, together at last

Fans of heavy drone music got a treat last night at the Empty Bottle. I caught some of Sun Splitter side project Dead Dragon Mountain and some of Winters of Osaka, and both worked up a decently doomy mood, but I spent most of my attention span—which can be tested during all-drone shows—on a solo set by Pelican/Chord guitarist Trevor de Brauw. It was one of the most fascinating solo guitar-and-loops performances I've seen, moving from crushing metal atmospherics to chiming shoegaze to a closing movement that used tremolo effects to unexpectedly—but not awkwardly—evoke electronic dance music.

While I was at the show, Andrew Barber at Fake Shore Drive tweeted that west-side rap legends Crucial Conflict had, with zero in the way of advance warning, dropped new material from what they're calling a sequel to their breakthrough 1996 album, The Final Tic.

By the time I got around to checking Twitter this morning, de Brauw had already posted a recording of his performance captured by Empty Bottle sound guy Matt Hannigan (who's also Pelican's touring sound guy). So out of nowhere my early afternoon turned unexpectedly into a psychedelic fast-rap/drone combo. De Brauw's "Don't Be an Asshole" (a work in progress, which he plans to record in a studio soon) and Crucial Conflict's new single "Sidewayz" (a dark club banger that finds the common ground shared by classic dubstep and old Three 6 Mafia) are both streamable below. Both are enjoyable on their own, but the real question is: Are you a bad enough dude to listen to both at the same time?